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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

It Wasn't Fun While It Lasted

Well it seems as though the waterfront stadium has as much chance of going ahead as my plans to rule the world.

Rodney Hide has said no for ideological reasons as has Locke from the Greens for much the same reason. How can it be a threat to the environment when all it will be doing is covering polluted water which nobody can swim in? How can it be an eyesore when what's there now is a far greater eyesore and nobody ever complains about it?

Stuff.co.nz should come out with an article tomorrow morning saying "A staggering 72% of population don't want Eden Park upgraded" but it will be more about the lack of support for the waterfront option.

Quite frankly the negative is far outweighing the positive comments and given the short time frame I think people are starting to be swayed and once it begins its pretty hard to pull them back.

For a bit of fun I crunched some numbers regarding how much money the stadium could expect to turnover in a decent year.

The ticket prices are all at the conservative end of the scale and I am only counting ticket earning not catering, merchandising and other spending in the surrounding areas or on the way to the stadium.

2 soldout AB tests6 Super 14 games with 25000 average attendance6 ANZNPC games with 15000 average attendanceKiwi test with 30000 there2 rock concerts with 30000 there2 one dayers with 25000 there

that's about $30 million in ticket turnover

If it was a good year with the Blues going well and attracting 30000 per game and getting a home semi and final and the NPC team getting more along and getting a home final you could add another 6 or so million dollars to that total.

If it was a wild and crazy year with the place going off and more rock concerts were there and other events unknown at this stage you could potentially get more than 40 million dollars in ticket tunrover. I reckon you could damn near double that in terms of how much people spend going to and from the venue and at it.

But oh no. We like a challenge. It's far more fun to try and get 60000 in and out of Eden Park. And then in 20 years time when we have 2 million people and test matches sell out in 3 minutes we can have the same debate all over again with people complaining about the 3 billion dollar price tag for the waterfront stadium. Instead we will just demolish the entire Mt Eden suburb and build another layer on top to seat 80000 and people can park in Pt Chev and walk there.

I've been to Eden Park a few dozen times over the years and I think from memory I haven't not gone straight home ONCE in all that time. It's a place that I drive to, park miles away from, walk back to the car and drive home from.

But if people are happy to spend 385 million dollars to fix a car wreck which isn't going to get a warrant in a few years time then so be it.

$36 million of ticket sales per year would include $4 million in GST. Should go someway to covering the govt's costs, even before people buy over-priced beer and hotdogs.

I guess a certain proportion of this money would be spent anyway, though, regardless of where a particular event is held. i.e., a waterfront stadium would generate only a certain amount of new business.